Trustees have halted plans to open a new public library for Smithfield and Middle Smithfield township residents in a Business Route 209 plaza near Country Kettle.

Eastern Monroe Public Library trustees voted Nov. 20 to terminate further negotiations on the purchase of the 2,800-square-foot building, located in a plaza owned by Ken Schuchman, who also owns Odd-Lot outlets in Marshalls Creek and Tannersville.

The plaza where the new library was to be located includes Enterprise Rent-A-Car and an auto repair shop.

Schuchman was not available for comment Sunday.

Trustees were concerned those businesses and the traffic they generate would detract from a library campus.

"The board does not believe the nature of the property can be made to fit with its core mission," said a statement released by the trustees on Sunday.

"The (property) would have obliged the library to either shared ownership or landlord management tasks that would have complicated its core mission to the public," said the statement.

Library officials had discussed entering into a "condominium agreement," which would have given them shared ownership of the building, said Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, chairman of the Eastern Monroe Public Library community relations and publicity committee.

Purchasing the entire property would have put library officials in the position of being "landlords" to all the other businesses in the development, he said.

There were also other concerns with the exits and entrances to the proposed library building. State law requires a certain amount of visibility in order for traffic to be able to turn both northbound and southbound.

Because of those restrictions, motorists leaving the library would have only been able to turn south on Route 209, unless traffic flow was reconfigured around the building, Stevens-Arroyo said.

Eastern Monroe Public Library has been looking for a larger home for its cramped Smithfields branch at Pocono Square (formerly Foxmoor Village).

The existing branch does not have enough space for a community room, like the one in the Hughes Library in Stroud Township.

The trustees will continue to look for a building to expand the cramped Smithfields branch, Stevens-Arroyo said.